It’s an odd spectacle. Traditionally, Brazilians take to the streets only during Carnival. Now they do it to protest. What has happened?
It all started after the fares for public transportation were raised, but that was just an excuse. There was more to it. The profound truth is that much of society is tired of corruption, impunity, the intricate bureaucracy and the government’s poor performance.
MIAMI, CMC – The United States Coast Guard says it has rescued five Haitian fishermen aboard a disabled vessel that had been drifting in the waters off northern Haiti.
A brief Coast Guard statement said officials were notified that the vessel had been found in the area of Canal de Tortue and contrary to earlier reports, there were five fishermen on the boat and not nine.
The statement said all are safe and in no immediate distress.
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Another round of demonstrations unfolded in cities throughout Brazil on Saturday, after many in the country’s sweeping protest movement angrily dismissed an effort by President Dilma Rousseff to address their broad demands.
WASHINGTON, CMC – The United States says it will resume migration talks with Cuba after a long suspension.
“Continuing to ensure secure migration between the US and Cuba is consistent with our interests in promoting greater freedoms and increased respect for human rights in Cuba,” said US Department of State spokesman William Ostick in a statement.
Ostick said that US and Cuban officials will meet here next month.
JOHANNESBURG (AP): Nelson Mandela was up to last night listed in critical condition after the South African government announced a deterioration in his health.
The office of President Jacob Zuma said in a statement that he had visited the 94-year-old anti-apartheid leader at a hospital Sunday evening and was informed by the medical team that Mandela's condition had become critical in the previous 24 hours.
GEORGETOWN, Guyana - There is not a lot in Brazil that is more important than football but on Wednesday, not even Brazil’s victory over Mexico in the Confederation Cup could divert attention from the wave of protests that have shaken the country this week.
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Just a few weeks ago, Mayara Vivian felt pretty good when a few hundred people showed up for a protest she helped organize to deride the government over a proposed bus fare increase. She had been trying to prod Brazilians into the streets since 2005, when she was only 15, and by now she thought she knew what to expect. But when tens of thousands of protesters thronged the streets this week, rattling cities across the country in a reckoning this nation had not experienced in decades, she was dumbfounded, at a loss to explain how it could have happened.
OTTAWA, Canada, CMC – A former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations, Paul Heinbecker, has welcomed the decision to send Canadian troops to Haiti as part of the peacekeeping mission on the French-speaking Caribbean Community (CARICOM) country. "I think this is a gesture that is positive and helpful and will be seen positively, although 34 soldiers isn't going to change a 6,000-person mission very much," Heinbecker told CTV's Canada AM television programme. Defence Minister Peter MacKay announced the deployment on the troops earlier this week.
In Syria, the Obama administration seems to be stumbling back to the future: An old-fashioned proxy war, complete with the usual shadowy CIA arms-running operation, the traditional plan to prop up ostensible “moderates” whose prospects are doubtful and, of course, the customary shaky grasp of what the fighting is really about.
This will not end well.
CARACAS (Reuters) - Wearing sports gear in the national colors and sitting on a sofa in a modest family home, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro holds a microphone, chats with locals and expounds on the benefits of socialism.
Variations of the scene - on a factory floor, playing soccer in the presidential palace or walking the plains with farmers - play daily on national TV as Hugo Chavez's successor makes "Gobierno en la Calle," or "Street Government," the chosen slogan of his rule.